OLUPONA: Thats a mixed bag. But after braving that first blizzard in a land far from his native Nigeria, Olupona stuck it out and earned his Ph.D. African spirituality has always been able to adapt to change and allow itself to absorb the wisdom and views of other religions, much more than, for example, Christianity and Islam. Ronald M. Green of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, a non-African scholar of African religion, has also written about African Traditional Religion and about religion and morality in Africa. The religious activities of chiefs and lineage heads are generally limited to the more routine biweekly and annual festivities, but traditional priests given their association with specific shrines are regarded as specialized practitioners through whom the spirits of the gods may grant directions. An important area Green points to has to do with the role of God in these two systems of thought. A holistic interpretation of the book between Paul and James. A follower of African diaspora religions has many choices in terms of seeking spiritual help or succor. Also, how the Christian organizations help free women and girls from the grip of slavery. Modernity has not put a total stop to its influence. Furthermore, the issue is whether a strict order of retribution cannot be tolerated if human ambition gets in the way of realizing enduring moral virtue and well-being. The spiritual medium is the physical embodiment of the religious retributive order in which Africans know themselves to stand.. At stake here is nothing less than the question of human culpability and ultimate redemption, which has to do with the traditional Christian topic of sin and grace. Additionally, I will not discourage, disparage, or try and convert those who practice their form of African indigenous religions. They do this by having Africans increasingly identify themselves as either Muslim or Christian, thus denying their unique African worldview that has always viewed as evidenced in their creation myths everything as unified and connected to the land, the place were ones clan, lineage, and people were cosmically birthed. These images could be of a lion or another animal carvedfrom a tree to represent a god. endobj
The Church is the Christian family, in which all are accompanied to one another through belief and baptism in Jesus Christ. The Spirit medium is in many ways a subordinate agency within the layer of retributive order. The voice and action of the spirit medium connect the community with these moral and spiritual entities who help shape human destiny. Content may require purchase if you do not have access. In the face of persistent human iniquity, God is believed to furnish means of atonement and forgiveness, thereby tempering justice with mercy., However, although Christianity and African Traditional Religion share some striking similarities, closer examination of African traditional beliefs reveals that the contrasts are far more striking than the similarities. Like Ronald Green, Magesa argues that African Traditional Religion is in the background of all African religiosity, both in Christianity and Islam, and supplies the basic attitude or worldview of most African Christians. Neglect, it is believed, might spell doom. M!eJ/"0Nq"3_ad!+;\4C2-0"+5qu|Rw!9KkC~V3M$ 2d yFT!Jf"ez:~
U S dE{hbaERVTGeqBzk2^oP)R}7Qv#.dQF4^%y+X-o"wr+l+B?{lb="akK;qurpDB ~O` Hn5~:D]xDS-V3tVgP`Axx8Mi2.O4g5=t DTW?ne![Cc?"C+E|o&Ks0`7_BiXHyJ8;B>7AfvuPTZV(3JW|/+Ywy"EtBEVYlNFc[5%X8@o|^DHD\*=z.)P??6`! The Supreme Being is usually thought of as remote from daily religious life and is, therefore, not directly worshipped. hand with the study of the people who practise the religion. :t\.1biti's approach assumes that "Christianity comes to enhance African traditional religions." This implies that there is no tension between the major elements of African Traditional Religions and the major claims of Christianity." 19 TraditionalAfricans gave offerings but they did not give tithes. Published online by Cambridge University Press: He went on to conduct some of the most significant research on African religions in decades. Pratten, David Traditional Africans did not practice baptism. Christianity is more dominant in the south, while Islam is more dominant in the north. For instance, in the southern Volta Region of Ghana, and in Togo and Benin, thousands of young girls of the Ewe (say Ay-vay) tribe are held as slaves in unspeakable conditions under a traditional religion belief called the trokosi system or wives of the ancestral gods. These included interviews he conducted with pastors, exorcists, traditional priests, so-called witches and delivered witches. Other spirits with a significant role in maintaining the African traditional moral world include ancestors and lineage spirits who operate in specific social contexts where their will is expressed through misfortunes, and some other spirits who do not act directly but who rely on human agents to effect their will. These spirits underlie the power of spirit mediums who, as mediators between space and the human world and by virtue of the moral authority this confers, are able to arbitrate between living human beings. Christians practice baptism. 1 0 obj
Part two provides a condensed historical survey of the, The Bible and the Third World: Precolonial, Colonial and Postcolonial Encounters, by R. S. Sugirtharajah. The recipient of many prestigious academic honors and research fellowships, Olupona also received the 20152016 Reimar Lust Award for International and Cultural Exchange, considered one of Germanys most prestigious academic honors. It doesnt have a fixed creed, like in some forms of Christianity or Islam. Traditional African religious influences on the church and the Bible It is worth noting that Cameroonians ferociously resisted foreign religions in the 18th century to maintain their traditional religions when Christianity entered Cameroon (Betoto, 2012). Africans had shrines they believedGod dwelt in. This is called the Trinity. It appeals more to social scientists than to those working in religious studies, particularly scholars of specific religious traditions. View all Google Scholar citations Consequently, traditional Africans have different ideas on what role the ancestors play in the lives of living descendants. This is not to say that indigenous African spirituality represents a form of theocracy or religious totalitarianism not at all. In addition, roughly a quarter or more of the population in 11 countries say they believe in the protective power of juju (charms or amulets), shrines and other sacred objects. When they pray they maykneel down, bow their heads or lift their hands up. The worship can be direct , but is done (mostly) indirectly through divine agents like the gods or divinities (abosom in Akan , legbaa in Ewe ) and the ancestors. It is essentially a postcolonial approach to what AIR and its essential characteristics is: God and humanity, sacrifices, afterlife and ancestors. INTRODUCTION Man considers life worth living because he finds certain things intrinsically valuable; hence value in its simple connotation means a thing of worth. The position I critique in this paper is really a complex of closely overlapping positions, some more theoretically sophisticated or better grounded empirically than others.1 Their central thrust is to emphasize the similarities rather than the differences between current movements in the world religions, particularly Christianity and Islam, but also to a lesser extent in Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism. They can also be the dead of the tribe, following the order of primogeniture. The Yoruba believe in the existence of the Supreme God called Olurun andthe lesser god, Obatala. O?+dOw\eOoHc_o~
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vnxX,o"\4/I+{U40f_dX!y2#i.7Xi0}zi*_Qk({_8D2M"09E%kR`O"}Ec#O3+lwP/z[r=]jPh!eC6Ci{FKnW4 Because many diseases are believed to have spiritual causes, traditional priests sometimes act as doctors or herbalists. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Such activities include the making of sacrifices and the pouring of libations. There is even a community deep in the American Bible Belt in Beaufort County, S.C., called Oyotunji Village that practices a type of African indigenous religion, which is a mixture of Yoruba and Ewe-Fon spiritual practices. Read our research on: Congress | Economy | Black Americans, Side by side with their high levels of commitment to Christianity and Islam, many people in the countries surveyed retain beliefs and rituals that are characteristic of traditional African religions. Olupona earned his bachelor of arts degree in religious studies from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, in 1975. The spirit medium is required to possess moral probity and integrity. OLUPONA: My father, a faithful Anglican priest, was a good example. <>/ExtGState<>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text/ImageB/ImageC/ImageI] >>/Annots[ 9 0 R] /MediaBox[ 0 0 595.32 841.92] /Contents 4 0 R/Group<>/Tabs/S>>
The African Traditional Religion, which is still in place today, can be compared to Christianity through their similarities and differences. These are called Taboos. Conflict is a universal phenomenon that is inevitable in human interaction. Peel, J. D. Y. In the part two of my writing, l will expand on the world populated by spirits called Vodou alongside that of the Akan. They claimed or argued strongly that in the light of the more objective or scientific study of religions, ATR can no longer be justifiably characterized as stupid, since the worshippers do not worship the said material objects per se, but the Spirit of the Creator reflected in them. The understanding of God normally needs some refining when one comes from African Traditional Religion to be a Christian. (+1) 202-419-4372 | Media Inquiries. as a burnt offering. As a universal religion, Christianity has to find an, This article engages with the notion of Ndembu traditional eco-masculinities which was conceptualised in a framework of sacrifice as ground for manliness. Christians acknowledge the existenceof magic and witchcraft. Different fathers played a role in the development of this religion. The vibrancy of African Traditional Religion in these two aspectstheological and moralcreates a unique opportunity for Christianity in Africa, one that, as Bediako points out has been lost to Christian theology in the West, "for a serious and creative theological encounter between the Christian and primal traditions." Today Christians worship Godmainly in churches. Most African communities offered animals and not humans as sacrifices. Odozor's Morality Truly Christian, Truly Africanpublished by theUniversity of Notre Dame Press. Thus, everythingis not completely unpredictable and chaotic because of this order. endobj
As I have discussed elsewhere in Morality Truly Christian, Truly African, for example, some African societies are so conscious of the implications of crossing the line on some ethical matters, like adultery, incest, and murder, that anyone who engages in these acts is considered automatically to be putting the very survival of the community in danger. %PDF-1.5
. Everywhere he went in southwestern Nigeria, he never opposed or spoke out against African culture including initiation rites, festivals, and traditional Yoruba dress as long as it didnt directly conflict with Christianity. Palmi, Stephan Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). <>
Janson, Marloes However, they do not seek the services of magicians orwitchdoctors. His research has helped to introduce and popularize new concepts in religious studies, such as the term reverse missionaries, referring to African prelates sent to Europe and the United States. They did this as theyoffered libation by pouring water or any other drink to the ground. Keywords: contextualization . x\s6Q|jyLd*{-Jb"$e~ $@ 6G"F@w? Mbiti makes a very controversial point when he claims that in African societies there are no acts that would be considered wrong in themselves. Many laws, customs, set forms of behavior, regulations, rules, observances and taboos, constituting the moral code and ethics of a given community, are held sacred, and are believed to have been instituted by God.Furthermore, a person acts in ways that are good when he or she conforms to the customs and regulations of the community, or bad when he or she does not. We will return to these issues later in Morality Truly Christian, Truly African, but for now it is enough to ask whether the similarities in the deep structure between the two religions are indeed as similar as Green suggests. Shrine visitation is strongest among the uneducated and in rural communities. A sacrifice refers to an animal that is offered to God, e.g. Commonalities between Christianity and Africa Traditional Religion. Part one looks briefly at the matter of religion itself. When punishment comes, it comes in the present life. Whatever the difference in the deep structures that undergird the moral life in the Christian conception or in Africa Traditional Religion, Green, like Mbiti, concludes that Africans believe in a morally saturated universe: The role of intermediary agents and spirits in maintaining moral order in African Traditional Religion is quite remarkable, as we have already seen from the work of Mbiti. Indigenous African religions are by nature plural, varied, and usually informed by ones ethnic identity, where ones family came from in Africa. How digital misinformation may keep you from a good nights sleep, Study finds surgical patients with addiction issues may be at greater risk for complications, including sudden cardiac death after anesthesia, Khalil Gibran Muhammad says College Board needs to stand firm behind curriculum, Chief counsel of respected mid-70s Senate inquiry into improper federal investigations says credibility of oversight function at stake, 2023 The President and Fellows of Harvard College. Their significance lies in the genealogical positions and the rights and duties which derive from them. Ancestors uphold right conduct by punishing moral violations, demanding respect and attention, and getting angry when not given due respect. 2017. That would be a serious loss not only for Africans, but also for academics, researchers, writers, and general seekers of wisdom the world over. <>
Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer, By Anthony Chiorazzi Harvard Correspondent. Both have places of worship. These laws are controlled by God directly or indirectly through Gods intermediaries. The success of Christianity and Islam on the African continent in the last 100 years has been extraordinary, but it has been, unfortunately, at the expense of African indigenous religions. Creative people have bypassed gatekeepers for centuries to distribute what they wanted to share so badly. They find common ground in Houghton Library exhibition. (1981) and Ph.D. (1983) in the history of religions from Boston University. The ordering of the universe and its continuance depends on God. African spirituality is truly holistic. An old African adage says: The sky is large enough for birds to fly around without one having to bump into the other.. 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